Dear Friends,
This is the
20th time I have sat down to write a CFZ Annual Report. It makes me
feel old.
The CFZ is
currently in the state of flux, but looking back over the past two decades it
seems that we always were. Ten years ago
George Harrison, my favourite Beatle died of cancer.
His
posthumous album contains a song which includes the words: “if you don't know
where you're going, any road will take you there”, and if I hadn't already
chosen a Latin tag Pro bona causa facimus (we do it for a good reason),
which I pinched from a children’s book called The Case of the Silver Egg
by the late Desmond Skirrow, then I would probably have adopted George
Harrison’s words. It is interesting, by the way, that I have never managed to
find any other reference to this Latin motto.
I had assumed that it was Scipio, Cicero or one of those dudes from
ancient Rome that I learned about during my
Latin classes in Bideford
Grammar School
I only just
realised, literally whilst typing these words that my choice of motto could
well be seen as quite significant in that it tells the story of a group of
children living in 1960s London
who get involved in a major international espionage mystery, and come out on
top. The important thing about the story
is that the Queen Street Gang do things in their own way, and usually without
adult interference or supervision.
Substitute the Queen Street Gang for the CFZ, and substitute ‘adults’
for erm... the scientific establishment, the established media, and pretty well
anybody else you can think of with whom we have come in contact over the past
two decades, and you have fairly good encapsulation of the ethos of the CFZ.
When I look
back over the last few years I see a CFZ that has changed rapidly in a very
short length of time. And it is changing
now, very much so. For example, when we
first moved to North Devon , we expanded the
CFZ animal collection greatly. In fact,
with hindsight, we expanded it too much.
Now we are downsizing, and we're doing so for a very important
reason. When we first came here we
intended to build a museum at the top of the grounds. We still have a small but interesting
collection of objects from our various investigations, but now we have decided
that it is far more important to have input into far more extensive exhibitions
elsewhere. For example, in
October/November 2012 we had a very successful exhibition at Barnstaple
museum, due to the kind offices of Julian Vayne.
As Corinna
and I get older I realise that the way that we lived only a few years ago,
sharing our living space with an ever-changing ménage of people is something
which a couple well into their fifties really cannot do any more. We still have visitors, and my old friend
Richard Freeman, who like Graham Inglis who still lives with us is more like a
brother than a friend, is still a frequent visitor. However, rather than looking for people to come
and live with us, we now look for volunteers who are happy to give up some of
their time and expertise on a regular basis to help further the CFZ ideal.
I am
particularly proud of our achievements in the world of publishing. During 2012
we published our first full-colour book, and also sponsored, financed and
published The Journal of Cryptozoology, the first English Language
peer-reviewed cryptozoological journal since the glory days of the ISC several
decades ago. The editor, Dr Karl Shuker wrote:
Welcome to the Journal
of Cryptozoology. Following the demise of Cryptozoology (published
by the now-defunct International Society of Cryptozoology), there has been no
peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to cryptozoology for quite some time.
Consequently, the Journal of Cryptozoology has been launched to remedy this
situation and fill a notable gap in the literature of cryptids and their
investigation. For although some mainstream zoological journals are beginning
to show slightly less reluctance than before to publish papers with a cryptozoological
theme, it is still by no means an easy task for such papers to gain acceptance,
and, as a result, potentially significant, serious contributions to the subject
are not receiving the scientific attention that they deserve. Now, however,
they have a journal of their own once again, and one that adheres to the same
high standards for publication as mainstream zoological periodicals.
I think that
when someone takes a look at our achievements, maybe in 20 years time when we
will have been in operation for 40 years, and I - if I'm still alive - will be
well into my dotage, they will find that our greatest achievement will have
been in publishing a long list of books which needed to be published, but which
nobody else would have touched with the proverbial bargepole.
PUBLISHING
We published 24 titles this year in six different imprints.
They were:
CFZ PRESS
Centre for Fortean
Zoology Yearbook 2012 edited by Downes, Jonathan
The Mystery Animals of
Pennsylvania
SEA SERPENT CARCASSES:
Scotland - from The Stronsa
Monster to Loch Ness by Vaudrey, Glen
Wildman! by
Redfern, Nick
Globsters by Newton ,
Michael
Cats of Magic,
Mythology and Mystery Shuker, by
Karl P. N
Those Amazing Newfoundland
CFZ - 1992-2012: The
Thoughts of Chairman Jon by Downes,
Jonathan
FORTEAN WORDS
The Grail by
Coghlan, Ronan
HAUNTED SKIES Volume
Four by Hanson, John and Holloway, Dawn
Quest for the Hexham
Heads by Screeton, Paul
UFO WARMINSTER: Cradle
of Contact by Goodman, Kevin
HAUNTED SKIES Volume
Five by Hanson, John and Holloway,
Dawn
HAUNTED SKIES Volume
Six by Hanson,
John and Holloway, Dawn
FORTEAN FICTION
Left Behind by
Wadham, Harriet
Snap Bredice, by
Steven
Green Unpleasant Land
by Freeman, Richard
Dark Ness
by Tabitca Cope
Death on Dartmoor by Francis, Di
Hyakumonogatari Book One by Freeman, Richard
Dark Wear by
Tabitca Cope
CFZ CLASSICS
Head Hunters of the Amazon (Annotated edition) by Up De Graff,
Fritz W
JOURNAL OF
CRYPTOZOOLOGY
THE JOURNAL OF CRYPTOZOOLOGY: Volume One edited by Shuker,
Karl P.N
Cfz communications
LANDMARK NORTHAM -
Bone Hill: Northam's Best Kept Secret by Jackson, Jim
We have had a few problems this year with ex-clients. From
the beginning I have always tried to run the publishing much after the manner
of the late Tony Wilson and Factory Records. It has worked fine as long as
everyone involved behaves like a gentleman. Unfortunately, this year, not everyone
has. We will be rejigging the contracts to cover us from these unfortunate
occurrences every happening again. We also now have the facility to print books
in colour and to produce ebooks, so the new contracts will also reflect these
new opportunities for us all.
WEIRD WEEKEND 2012
This year’s event was
once again held on the third weekend of August. The Programme was as follows:
FRIDAY
Richard Freeman: 20 Cryptids you have never heard of
Paul Screeton: The Hexham Heads
BOOK LAUNCH: Quest for the Hexham Heads
Richard Thorns: The search for the Pink Headed Duck
Bedtime Story with Silas Hawkins
SATURDAY
Intro to Cryptozoology
Nick Wadham: The Bugfest Deadly Animal Show
Max Blake: An analysis of the Borley Bug
Harriet Wadham: Book Signing
Jonathan McGowan: Large cats in Britain
- The Dorset enigma
Glen Vaudrey: Scottish sea monster carcasses
BOOK LAUNCH: Scottish sea monster carcasses
Jan Bondeson: Greyfriars Bobby
CFZ Awards
Film Premiere: Heads (Dir. Graham Williamson )
The Hexham Heads - Q&A with Graham Williamson and Paul
Screeton
Bedtime Story with Silas Hawkins
SUNDAY
Richard Muirhead: The Flying Snake of Namibia
Lars Thomas: Danish Cryptozoology
Richard Freeman et al: Sumatra 2011
Lars and Jon: Wild Woolsery - the results of the Nature Walk
Ronan Coghlan: Sinbad the Sailor
Jon Downes: Keynote Speech
Speaker's Dinner at the Community Centre
Film: Occasional Monsters
Silas Hawkins: Final Bedtime Story
The 2013 event will take place on the third weekend of
August once again. Confirmed speakers so far include:
Oll Lewis: The Murder of the Elephant Man
Lars Thomas: The Natural History of Trolls
Intro to Cryptozoology
Nick Wadham: TBA
Quiz
Glen Vaudrey - Mystery animals of Cheshire
Richard Thorns: Expedition report
CFZ Awards
Richard Freeman: Sumatra 2013
Sarah Boit: Orbs from a photographer's perspective
London Cryptozoology club
Shaun Histead-Todd: Pre Columbian civilisations in america
TBC
Ronan Coghlan: The Sirius Mystery
Jon Downes: Keynote Speech
I would like to say a big thank you to Matthew and Emma
Osborne for their hard work both for the Weird Weekend and for other projects
during the year. We really couldn’t manage without you. I would like to thank
everyone at the Community Centre especially Simon and Sharon Bennett for
everything they did for us. Your kindness humbles me.
ANIMALS
The most important news this year concerns our Rio Cauca
caecilians (Typlonectes natans). We
were prod to breed them in 2011, and devastated when all four babies died in
the winter. However, we bred them for the second year running this year. They
are in a new tank at a slightly higher temperature and with a wide range of
diet. If they survive the winter, two of the babies will be going to London Zoo
in the spring.
We have also acquired a pair of Chinese black spined toads
and a single chubby frog, and hope to be building up colonies of both these
species. The village pub has changed hands and no longer wants to be involved
with our outreach programme so we have removed our fish from there.
FUTURE
Now, what
does the future hold for us? Of course,
I cannot answer that question with any degree of certainty, and bearing in mind
quite how many of what Graham calls curveballs have come our way over the past
two decades, I would be even more foolish than normal if I tried to foresee the
future. However, what I can do is
to tell you what I would like to see happen.
I created the
CFZ in my own image (and by this, I mean that I created it according to an
image in my mind rather than having created it to look like an ageing fat
hippy) and to a greater or less extent have been steering it in my desired
direction ever since. It is interesting
that when, like I have over the last few days, you look back of the history of
the organisation you can see that it has had several distinct phases.
Phase
one: the infancy, during which it was run purely by me and my first
wife Alison. (1992 to 1993)
Phase
two: our first phase of expansion during which Alison and I were
joined by the late Jan Williams, and we started publishing. (1994 to 1996)
Phase
three: in the immediate aftermath of Alison’s and my divorce, I was
joined first by Graham, and then by Richard, and the three of us managed the
running of the organisation quite happily, although at this stage we were still
basically a theoretical and publishing organisation. (1996 to 2002)
Phase
four: as my mental and physical health improved, and - in the wake
of my mother's death - my income also improved, we began to do more and more
fieldwork, and to publish more books (2002 to 2005).
Phase
five: after the move to North Devon
and then in the wake of my father's death when I was able to divert
considerably more funds into an ambitious campaign of publications. Things became even more coalesced in 2007
when I married someone who took it upon herself to make the administration of
the organisation work properly for the first-time.
Now we are
approaching phase six.
My family
arrived in the little village
of Woolsery
His two
sisters were younger than me: Lorraine
by about two years, and Kaye by about four. David and I used to tease them
unmercifully. Whilst they, too, were fond of animals, they found the wriggly
things that their brother and I used to keep in jam jars in the garden shed to
be uniformly icky. David and I realised this and used to torment the poor girls
with biscuit tins full of spiders, and jam jars containing large and ugly
horseleeches. It is - I believe - a testament to their good nature that we are
still friends more than 30 years later. But in a situation analogous to that I
described earlier regarding Richard Freeman and Graham Inglis, Lorraine and Kaye have
always been more like sisters to me than friends, and especially since David
died tragically young in 1987. Kaye has
always referred me as her adopted brother and I have been Uncle Jon to her
three children from the age when they first were self-aware enough to realise
that the fat hippy in the corner was really quite nice.
A few months
after I brought the CFZ to North Devon to help
me look after my dying father, I telephoned Kaye. I was just being a nice Uncle, but I wondered
whether her eldest son David (then aged 13) would like to come up and work for
us on Saturday afternoons for a few quid here and there. He soon became invaluable, and after the
second Weird Weekend he did with us I realised that we really would not be able
to function without him. I don't think I
treated him like a child after the age of 14, and at the time of writing he is
approaching his 21st birthday, and I have only just realised that he is the
same age as the CFZ - he has shouldered the responsibility of being my chosen
heir with equanimity.
In 2001 I
codified the structure of the CFZ formerly for the first time. At the top is our titular Life President John
Blashford-Snell who took over the position when the previous incumbent
Professor Bernard Heuvelmans - usually known as the ‘Father of Cryptozoology’ -
died.
Below him was
a three-person committee consisting of myself, Graham, and Richard. Being three of us it means that we never have
a hung vote. However, I would like to
say that in the ten years that we have been operating in this manner we have
never had a serious disagreement.
Below us
there is what I dubbed The Permanent Directorate, and another group called the
Advisory Board. The Permanent Directorate included people from the various
study groups, the various international offices and those who have particular
skills to offer. The Advisory Board are exactly what they sound like - a group
of people who have particular expertise for knowledge in one specific area.
Now, ten
years after setting this hierarchical management structure into place I am
making the first major change. The three-man management committee has been - as
of the 2011/2 management meeting - replaced by a five-person committee. Until now the only people eligible to vote
have been me, Graham and Richard. Now,
because of their invaluable contributions, I have expanded the committee to
include my wife Corinna, and my nephew David Braund-Phillips. The Permanent
Directorate, and the Advisory Board will still be there to advise and assist,
but will not be able to make decisions.
I intend to
continue our programme of publications, and in 2012 I have instituted a new
series imprint called CFZ Classics.
These will not just bring books that have been long out of print, and
which are really only available to the cognoscenti, into the wider public
consciousness, but will serve another, and equally important, function. There are people within the cryptozoological
research community who have little or no income beyond state benefits. The last
few governments have progressively demonised benefit claimants until it looks
quite possible that we will see the end of state benefits as we know them in
the UK
within the next few years.
We have the
technology and infrastructure available to publish as many books as we want,
and the Internet is an invaluable marketing tool. Each of the books in the series will have
extra essays, footnotes and as much additional material as we can provide. As each of the books in question is well out
of copyright, the author’s royalties will be paid to the person who put the
package together. We will provide an
unprecedented level of help to put currently impecunious researchers into the
position where they can earn themselves a monthly income through their own
efforts, and thus be able to lift themselves out of the poverty trap.
As I have
written elsewhere, I had an unhappy childhood, and though I was a mildly gifted
child, my family and teachers did their best to stifle my creativity and
aspirations. Despite them I achieved
most of what I wanted to, and am now in the position to help another generation
of writers, artists, and dreamers. I
won't embarrass them by naming names, but there are various people now in the
scientific and cryptozoological establishment who have become what they are
today, at least in part because I and the CFZ encouraged them when it mattered
most. Ever since we moved to North Devon we have had more and more children becoming
involved in what we do, and I think that this is massively important. We intend to do all we can to encourage
literacy, and a love of nature, as well as encouraging the innate curiosity of
succeeding generations of young people for as long as we can.
I have always
believed that we are a family, in a very real sense, and now we are rapidly
becoming a truly global family. And like
a real family in the last year we have had several deaths, at least one birth,
and human tragedy and triumph of various scales. Last year we raised money for
the family of one of our longest serving Sumatran guides, Sahar Dimus who died
suddenly, and we have done similar things as well. I hope that this is only the
beginning, and that we can eventually run programmes all over the world to help
the members of the CFZ family who are less fortunate than ourselves.
This year we
had two young ladies spend work placements with us; Saskia England (aged
14) in the spring and Sheri Myler (aged 20) in the autumn. I hope that both of
them enjoyed their placements with us and took away something of value from
their time with us. We certainly learned a lot from both of them and hope to
have many more trainees in the future.
Over the
years I have made some bad decisions, and I have made some wrong
decisions. My decisions to run a little
museum and zoo in my back garden ultimately proved to be unwise, for
example. However, over the past two
decades the CFZ has done pretty well under my stewardship, and I am proud of
what we have achieved together. I hope
that whatever happens, we continue to be essentially a caring organisation, one
that puts people before money, and common sense before ideology. I hope that the CFZ never loses its sense of
humour, its sense of idealism, and never loses touch with its core concept, that
half a century or more after Bernard Heuvelmans first brokered the ideal: the
great days of zoology are not done.
Jon Downes,
CFZ, North Devon , 23rd December 2012
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